What happens if you walk into a swamp at night and say three times, we have your baby. If you do that in the Bare Creek Swamp in Pratful, Alabama, you might not like the answer. Legend has it that a woman lost her child in that swamp and spent the rest of her life trying to find it. It isn't clear how the child disappeared. Maybe it wandered off, or there are those who say it was taken by a war party of the Native Americans. We don't even know for sure if the child was a boy or
a girl. But what we do know is that death wasn't enough of a deterrent to make the woman stop looking. Imagine how it must have been for that poor woman. It probably started like any day she was going about doing her chores. It was a long time ago when different chores required a whole day's work just to complete one task. Maybe it was laundry day. She was busy boiling water and shaving strips of soap into it from
a homemade bar. She would have been bent over while scrubbing the bedding and clothes on a washboard before passing them through another tub of water to rentse away the excess soap and finally hang them out to dry. While Mama worked diligently at her burden, the child let's assume it was a girl and let's call her Sarah, played with her doll in the grass nearby. Mama didn't have much time to give little Sarah much attention. She had to rely on the child to play contently and stay close.
Mama probably didn't think much of it. The first time she stepped around from behind a freshly hung sheet to see her daughter wasn't in her place on the ground, Sarah. She most likely called, putting just enough of an edge on her voice to warn her daughter to come back to her spot. Then she picked up the next sheet and hung it. When she stepped around from behind the laundry again, her daughter was still nowhere in sight, Sarah. She called again, this time with a little more authority.
A third trip to the clothes line occupied Mamma for a few more minutes. When little Sara still wasn't back in her place, she probably muttered something like where is that child off to As she walked around to the side of the house. Sarah wasn't there. She looked around and listened for a moment, hoping to hear her little girl's laughter. She heard nothing. Mamma continued around to the back of the house and then to the other side. By the time she'd made her way back to the front,
she was beginning to worry Sarah. She called out loudly and then stopped to listen. A cool breeze rattled the budding leaves on the trees, but no child's voice could be heard. Panicked now, she left the house yard and went down to the barn, scattering the hens that pecked at the dirt in her path as she passed. Sarah, where are you, she repeatedly called. As she swung open the door, the contrast of light and dark temporarily blinded her. She stood there for a moment, allowing her eyes to adjust.
In focus, Sarah, she called out again. A bird took flight as she ducked as it swooped low over her head to escape through the open door, and silence followed. Slowly, With terrified eyes, the woman turned and gazed into the swamp that bordered their little house to the south and east. Sarah, she whispered, as thoughts of the child wandering in such
a danger's place filled her mind. She imagined cotton mouths and copper heads singing their fangs into the little girl's legs, and calculated how quickly she would succumb to such a bite without someone there to help. She had visions of alligators dragging her precious child into the water and tearing her to pieces, and her mind raced through scenarios where predators clamped down on the back of the baby's neck and dragged her deep into the swamp to gnaw on
her tiny bones. Dear God know, she managed to cry. She raced into the thick briars, mindless of the thorns that tore at her own clothes. She had to find her baby, she swore, as she'd never stop looking until she did. Hours later, her husband came in from the fields and found the cabin empty. He called to his wife, but she didn't answer. She hadn't started supper, and he couldn't help but notice the half finished laundry out in the yard. Where was she? He stepped back outside and
called her name, and then he listened. Sarah. He heard somewhere in the distance Sarah. Was she lost? Was his wife out looking for her? He followed his wife's path into the swamp, calling to her as he went. Sometimes he'd stop and listen, and again and again he heard his wife's voice calling Sarah. But no matter how hard he searched, he couldn't pinpoint the location of the sound. Night fell on the swamp, crushing the light and his hopes of finding either his wife or his child with it.
The next morning, he saddled a horse and went to town. A search party was formed, and every inch of the swamp that could be accessed was searched. There was no sign of the man, wife, and child. Once in a while, everyone would stop and listen, Sarah. They heard deepen the by you, Sarah, but they couldn't tell where it was coming from. After several days of looking, they gave up. Eventually, the man packed up and moved away. Living so close to the place that had swallowed up everything that meant
anything to him was more than he could stand. No one knows whatever happened to him. I'd like to think he found happiness somewhere else. As for his wife, they say she is still out there searching. So what happens if you step into Bear Creek Swamp and say three times we've got your baby? Her mother will appear and attack you, and if you escape, more power to you. But if she catches you, you'll wind up up like little Sarah. No one will ever find you. This isn't
the only story about Bear Creek Swamp. There are tales of mysterious lights that appear in the road ahead. The ghost of the Alibaimu Indians are often reported drifting in and out of the fog and then disappearing altogether. It is even said that a civil war battle plays itself out over and over again on the breeze at night. You'll never find the source, they say, but you will hear cannons or is that just someone's still blowing up.
Aside from these frightening paranormal stories, there's one true and verified incident that happened just a few short years ago. While on patrol on dirt Road three through the swamp, an officer happened to glance over and see a porcelain doll sticking up out of the muddy waters. At that time, he thought, well, that's odd, but didn't give it much more thought until over the next few days, dozens of reports came in of a doll's head seen in the swamp.
The police went out to investigate and discovered a total of twenty one dolls impaled on bamboo poles and stuck down in the mire. It was a veritable dull graveyard. Some of their faces were painted white, further enhancing an already grim scene. I don't know who the prankster was or who took the time to place all those dolls out there, but kudos to you. You succeeded in creating one of the creepiest practical jokes I have ever known of.
All swamps contain an air of mystery, a feeling of being otherworldly, whether you feel like you've stepped through some kind of a time warp, landed on another planet, or passed through the vales that separate life from after life. All swamps at some point will impose uncomfortable emotions on the bravest of men. When that swamp bears the name Hackemack, which means the place where spirits dwell and was originally called the devil Swamp by white settlers, those feelings are
likely to come more frequently and with greater intensity. While we tend to think of swamps as being a Southern landscape, they're not Hakamack is located in southeastern Massachusetts, square in the middle of the legendary Bridgewater Triangle. Stories have poured out of that region of weird creatures, ghostly apparitions, and
unexplainable disappearances for generations. Places like a Sonnet Ledge, where even the happiest of souls fell the suicidal urge to throw themselves into the waters below, and Easton's Mill Pond, where satanic imps were said to be employed by Nathan Seleah, a wizard to run the mill at night, can be found within the triangle. It seems that everywhere within the triangle hides one legend or another, but within the swamp
there are many. Early one morning, a fisherman was quietly running his boat along the banks of the non Catessit River, moving into the swamp through a heavy fog, when he heard what sounded like a distant drum beeat. It only lasted a moment, but it got his attention. He glanced around, but the mists were too thick and the sound had stopped, so he continued on his journey with nothing more than a gentle whirring of his trolling motor to break the silence.
When he heard it again, and again he stopped and listened. The slapping clunk of waves lapping at his boat echoed around him, and somewhere a bird called for its mate. The wind rustled in the trees, and the occasional raindrop fell with a splat against the aluminum seat at the bow. The drums he thought he heard were gone, and again the warring trolling motor kicked up, and he moved on. Now on the edge, the fishermen began to feel as
though he were being watched. His natural response was to watch back, except he didn't know what he was looking for. And then he saw it. It was nothing more than a patch of fog that seemed a little denser than the rest, but it was moving rhythmically. The fisherman cocked his head to listen, and there were no drumbeats now, just the even gentle, trickling woosh of a paddle being swept through the water, over and over as it propelled
a boat forward. The fisherman craned his eyes hard on that point, and the haze was spinning and dissolving and reforming. White particles of water disintegrated into darkness and then reformed in shades of buff and brown. Tendrils that trailed into space solidified into arms, and a spherical object that once floated aimlessly, became a human head. Before the fisherman's eyes. A Native American slid out of the void and appeared
to be paddling his canoe toward him. Too stunned to move, the fisherman grasped the sides of his boat and waited for impact. He was sure this strange man in the traditional apparel of the Wampanawag people was going to steer his canoe right into him. Seconds before he would have done just that, the strange man turned the canoe slightly and glided silently past. He was so close that the fisherman could have reached out and touched him. The fisherman
never took his eyes off the bazaar site. As the canoe passed, he turned his head to follow, and just as it had materialized into existence, it dissolved out of it. Not once did the man in the canoe acknowledge the fisherman. Seconds after the apparition disappeared, the distant sounds of a drum could be heard. One last time. The fisherman might have counted himself lucky. That day, another man, this one
outlaying muskrat lines, had a similar experience. It wasn't drums that he heard that morning, but a loud crash startled The man looked up to see a massive, hairy beast to break through the trees and slog down into the waters of the swamp. It growled with a low, menacing rumble before passing within a few yards of the terrified man. I knew it wasn't a man because it smelled when it passed. He would later say it smelled like a skump,
musky and dirty. Aside from ghostly apparitions and unknown beast, Hackamack Swamp has a reputation for another phenomenon. In nineteen oh eight, two undertakers were traveling between West Bridgewater and Bridgewater when they spotted something in the sky that looked to them like a giant lantern. The two men stopped and watched the peculiar light while it hovered in place
for nearly forty minutes. In nineteen oh eight, there were no blaming experimental military aircraft for what the undertaker saw. Granted Orville and wilbur Wright first achieved flight just south of Kittyhawk North Carolina in nineteen oh three, but craft capable of hovering in nineteen oh eight I was still getting no more than a few feet off the ground and never managing to stay in the air for more than a few minutes. The first practical helicopter wouldn't come
into existence until nineteen thirty nine. Even if it were possible that the inventors working diligently to give wings to man just happened to fly those machines over Hackamack's Swamp on the same night that two undertakers happened to be traveling past, it doesn't explain the first documented UFO sighting ever recorded there. John Winthrop was a lawyer and a Puritan.
In sixteen thirty he helped establish the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the second settlement in New England after the Plymouth Colony. For twelve years, he served as governor. During that time, he kept an extensive diary of the trials and triumphs of his fellow Puritans. One entry in particular is now referred to as the first documented u FO siding in American history. In his March first, sixteen thirty nine entry, Winthrop told the story of John Everell and two others.
He declared Everell to be a man of good reputation, activity, and estate in Boston. The following is an excerpt from the diary. In this year, one James Everell, a sober, discreet man, and two others saw a great light in the night at Muddy River. When it stood still, it flamed up and was about three yards square, and when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine. It ran as swift as an arrow towards Charleston, and so up and down for about two or three hours.
They were come down in their lighter about a mile, and when it was over they found themselves carried quite back against the tide to the place they came from. Diverse other credible persons saw the same light after about the same place. These men in good standing with the Governor, along with several others, saw these lights over the course
of three hours. They hovered and darted and shot back and forth as these men watched, And when it was over they found themselves a full mile upstream from where they'd been when they first spotted the lights. Upstream? Were these men also the first alien abductees? UFO reports continued to come out of this region today. In nineteen ninety nine, a woman saw lights while she was at a cookout. She says they too darted around. At one point, she says, they looked as if they were heading right for the
house where the cookout was being held. What makes her story so fascinating is that once the lights disappeared, helicopters swarmed the area where they'd been, as if they were looking for something. Was our government searching for something? Or had they just missed a rendezvous